Remembering Walt Disney, the Creator of the 'Most Magical Place on Earth,' Who Died of Lung Cancer At Age 65

At the time of his death, The Walt Disney Company was a $100-million-a-year empire. Now, the company is worth more than $200 billion with all of its assets. (Taking inflation into account, today Walt Disney himself would be worth about $1 billion.)

A Lifelong Smoker

Disney was a lifelong smoker, and it is a fact that smoking causes lung cancer. In fact, smoking causes most cases of this cancer. Tobacco smoke contains a mixture of more than 7,000 different chemicals, at least 70 of which are known to cause cancer. (If you quit smoking, you can significantly reduce your risk of developing the disease and dying from it.)

However, almost 20% of people who die from lung cancer in the United States each year have never smoked or used any other form of tobacco. SurvivorNet experts say that anyone with lungs can get lung cancer, regardless of if you have smoked or not.

"If you're smoking, don't smoke," Dr. Joseph Friedberg, head of thoracic surgery at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, tells SurvivorNet. "You never return down all the way to the (level of) the person who never smoked as far as your risk of lung cancer goes, but it goes down with time."

Take it From a Guy Who Looks at Diseased Lungs Every Day Stop Smoking

In an op-ed published on Aug. 9, 1995 in the Los Angeles Times, Walt Disney's daughter and only child, Diane Disney Miller, writes that her father began smoking at the end of the Great War "for the same reasons adolescents do today: to symbolize their independence, to appear older and more sophisticated, to look 'cool.'"

"Like so many others, he became addicted to nicotine, although he never would have believed himself addicted to anything," she adds.

Walt Disney's Untimely Death

Walt Disney died on Dec. 15, 1966, just 10 days after his 65th birthday.

According to Neal Gabler's book, Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination, doctors discovered a spot on Disney’s left lung during a diagnostic workup prior to a surgery he was scheduled to have for a polo injury. (Disney was a committed polo player. If you don't know what polo is, it is a horseback ball game one of the world's oldest known team sports. The game is played by two opposing teams with the objective of scoring using a long-handled wooden mallet to hit a small, hard ball through the opposing team's goal, all while on horseback.)

The spot's discovery prompted his doctor to immediately refer him to Providence Saint Joseph Medical Center in Burbank right across the street from Walt Disney Studios for surgery, according to Gabler's book.

"They took an X-ray of your father's lung and they found a lump the size of a walnut," Lillian Disney says to her daughter, Diane, over the phone, according to the book.

The type of surgery was not specified, however, an official Walt Disney press release stated that Disney was in the hospital undergoing tests and to be treated for the aforementioned polo injury, Gabler writes.

"But the truth was that Walt almost certainly had lung cancer," the book states.

Surgery for Lung Cancer

There are several types of surgery available for lung cancer now-a-days, and the decision about which is best for you is based largely on the location of your cancer, its size and whether it has started to spread. (As previously stated, it’s unclear what type of surgery Walt Disney had for his lung cancer.)

For example, a wedge resection is an option if your tumor is small and located on the outside of the lung. During this procedure, your surgeon removes a piece of the lung (in the shape of a wedge) and lung function is not affected.

Surgical Options for Lung Cancer

In contrast, a lobectomy, or a segmentectomy, involves the removal of a certain segment of the lung (a lobe). During a pneumonectomy, however, the entire lung is removed.

There are several different ways to do lung cancer surgery. The standard operation used to be open surgery with a big incision in the chest and then spreading apart the ribs. But because of the pain after the operation and the lengthy recovery time, doctors are increasingly using less invasive operations including minimally invasive video-assisted thoracoscopic surgery, also known as VATS, and robotic techniques.

This can be a lot to take in, but remember that your surgeon will go over all of these options with you when planning your treatment.

Contributing: SurvivorNet staff

Learn more about SurvivorNet's rigorous medical review process.